In an effort to distance himself from his new company, the realists who, like him, oppose the Israel lobby, Jeffrey Goldberg has repeated his ugly claim that Walt and Mearsheimer are antisemites. One reason they’re antisemites, he says, is in their insistence that U.S. policy in Israel/Palestine, which is affected to a large degree by the Israel lobby, was one of the motivators of the 9/11 attackers. You see, says Goldberg, they say Jews were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
This is ugly and reckless. Yes, absolutely, Walt and Mearsheimer said that our I/P policy played a part in 9/11. From their original paper:
There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin
Laden, are motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and the plight
of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier
for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits.
This is merely commonsensical. It is borne out by Osama’s own statements about his recruits’ concerns, and I remember Mickey Kaus saying it at the time, even as the neocons said it was because the hijackers couldn’t get girlfriends in a polygamous society, or some other psychological claptrap. How
large a part Palestine had in 9/11 motivation it is hard to say. Those guys aren’t giving interviews. (Lately Osama bin Laden has said it was everything to him and his boys. No he is not a
reliable narrator.)
Goldberg is thus trying to shut down a legitimate discussion by smearing the speakers, with a charge, antisemitism, that is considered a slander when it is baseless, as it is here. It is important to remember that this kind of intimidation works. In a famous 2004 article, Francis Fukuyama, the former neocon, angered by Charles Krauthammer’s blithe attitude toward the Iraq disaster he had helped author, said very nearly the same thing: Islamic radicals swim in a “sea” of Muslims, many of whom hate us not for who we are but what we do:
What they do
not like is a familiar list of complaints about our foreign policy that we
somehow continue to fail to take seriously: our lack of concern for the plight
of the Palestinians, our hypocritical support for dictators in Muslim countries,
and now our occupation of Iraq…This suggests that we need a much more complex strategy that recalibrates
the proportion of sticks and carrots….Israel’s policy of constantly being on the
offensive, pre-empting and taking the initiative (as in its policy of targeted
assassinations) is also something that does not scale well. Unlike Israel, the
United States has a substantial margin of strategic depth and does not
constantly have to run risks in order to stay on top.
Krauthammer responded by accusing Fukuyama of antisemitism– I believe he called it Judeophobia, I can’t find the link– for suggesting that Israel had made them do it. That is very similar to Goldberg’s charge. Fukuyama is a quiet guy who likes to do photography. He didn’t enjoy the confrontation. In his subsequent book, America at the Crossroads, Fukuyama muted the Israeliana but continued to talk about Palestinians:
the seething anger against the United States in the Arab world over Palestine makes it much easier for the hard-core terrorists to operate, providing them with sympathizers, informants, and recruits. (This is not to argue that the United States should abandon Israel to appease their anger, but rather to recognize the fact that that support has costs.) When Arabs say that they like the United States but don’t like American foreign policy, it would sem both prudent and minimally respectful to take them at their word, rather than putting them on a psychiatrist’s couch and telling them that they couldn’t possibly mean what they say.
That book thanks John Mearsheimer for guidance. Mearsheimer has helped a great number of younger scholars, including Fukuyama. Today Jerry Slater stands up on my site for Mearsheimer against this vile charge. Well, Fukuyama has been there himself, and shares something of Mearsheimer’s view of the matter. He can get on Op-ed pages, he should take part in this debate.
